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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27226594">Free Me (You, Us) From These Chains</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia'>afterandalasia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Not Another D&amp;D Podcast (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canon Non-Binary Character, Established Relationship, Human Again Sex, M/NB, Neddas and Nullar are so painfully in love (Not Another D&amp;D Podcast), Neddas's Genitals are Not Specified (Not Another D&amp;D Podcast), Other, POV Neddas (Not Another D&amp;D Podcast), Post-Trinyvale Campaign (Not Another D&amp;D Podcast), Reunions, Sexual Content, Thank you to Good Omens for that tag format</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:01:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,589</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27226594</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Free from the chains of godhood, from the fetters of immortality and eternity, it is as if they are being born anew. Neddas seeks the new-familiar comfort of Nullar's arms, and coaxes out the living man from beneath the years of the undying god.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Neddas/Nullar (Not Another D&amp;D Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Free Me (You, Us) From These Chains</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Smaller fandom, even smaller pairing, but here we go. Have at these tragic disasters.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They promise themselves, they swear, that they will wait until they are alone to give in to the yearning in their chest and throw themselves into Nullar's arms again. But in the end it doesn't matter, because just sitting in that strange restaurant that their rescuers - or at least, two out of the three of them - had seemed so keen on, Liandt leaves the two of them alone in a booth, and Nullar turns with uncertainty in his eyes for the first time in so, so long. He stumbles through an apology, the eloquence of his anger giving way to uncertain words, and Neddas falls in love for the thousandth time with the man who became a god.</p><p>Heedless of the rest of the restaurant, they kiss him, just a gentle touch at first with their own uncertainty. But it is so familiar, so easy, the history of ten thousand kisses remembered between them, and in no time at all the world around them melts away as they fall into each other all over again.</p><p>“Then place where I have been living is mostly intact,” says Nullar, when they finally part. His voice is low and breathless, and he looks at Neddas as if he cannot bear to tear his eyes away. “I know that... I have plenty of rooms. I will offer one to Liandt, as well.”</p><p>As if so little time as two hundred years might have driven Neddas away from him. Neddas runs his thumb over Nullar's knuckles, and delights to see him shiver slightly even after all this time. “Thank you,” they say. “I would appreciate it.”</p><p>Nullar swallows, the colour in his cheeks that only Neddas has ever been able to put there, and nods shakily. “I will go talk to Liandt,” he says, and slides out of the booth to rise to his feet.</p><p>In his wake, Neddas looks around the restaurant again. It is fascinating, how much things can change in two hundred years, how much the great patterns of things remain the same. Liandt plays this new game of darts with the same fervour that she ever wrestled or sparred or threw her javelins, and across the bar the group of gnomes have some complicated metal contraption in front of them even if they seem to be using it to determine who among them drinks each time.</p><p>Neddas catches the eye of the young bard – they have heard his friends teasing him about his age, but they are all so young – who is still sneaking bewildered glances at the Prince sitting beside him, and gives what they hope is a reassuring smile. If nothing else, they recognise loneliness when they see it. Good luck to them both.</p><p>Nullar returns blushing harder, and Neddas wonders what Liandt has said this time to provoke it. She always did have a knack for ruffling Nullar's feathers, while Neddas would chuckle quietly to themselves. It was not as if she was ever wrong, after all.</p><p>“Liandt has, ah, found other accommodation,” says Nullar. “Seems there are plenty of people in Dagorast who would be honoured to host her. It sounds as if she could go the rest of her life without needing to pay rent.”</p><p>"Like the kings of old," Neddas points out. <em>The rest of her life</em> – they can hear the distant awe in Nullar's voice to even say such words, that after all these desolate millennia they all might finally have the chance to grow old, to wane, to rest. "I'm sure if she ever becomes tired of her city, she will remember your offer."</p><p>"She did offer to help me rebuild the wing that she destroyed," says Nullar. "I assured her that won't be necessary."</p><p>Neddas chooses not to ask, but it does not sound at all unlike Liandt. Unlike any of them, truth be told; even they, perhaps the mildest of the three, had destroyed buildings in the greatest of their rages. Had helped destroy a continent, apparently. But when everything was temporary compared to your own lifespan, how was the destruction of a continental that much worse than the snapping of a twig?</p><p>Now, finally, they could see buildings that would outlive them. <em>People</em> who would outlive them, even. Mortals always seemed frightened of their own mortality, but after so long, Neddas could understand the excitement of it all. Not necessarily the longing for death, no, but the feeling that things around them mattered. Mattered even more than them.</p><p>"I would be glad to see where you have made your home," they offered.</p><p>Nullar's eyes grew sadder, smile fading. "Nowhere has felt like home in a very long time," he replied, soft despite the chatter of the room.</p><p>Immortality. It had always weighed on Nullar hardest of them all. Neddas finished their drink and rose to their feet, glancing around the room again. Liandt was now arm-wrestling one of the gorillas, both sides being cheered on by those around them, while at the next booth the bard Jens, his arm now around the Prince, was lecturing his brother around fruit and vegetables. Looking around for the third of their party, Neddas spotted Onyx and one of the gnomes disappearing hand-in-hand into the toilet cubicles, Onyx with a very determined look on her face. For someone still tasting the ghost of a kiss, the look was unmistakable, and Neddas wished her well with it. They had always found it... reassuring, in a way, the commonality of the sexual drive across the ages. The desire for romance, as well, and the search for friendship. For making connections, which spanned down in spidering long lines across all time. Lines almost as long as they, or Nullar, or Liandt could trace.</p><p>They took Nullar's hand. "You have a lifetime left to make one."</p><p>For a moment, they thought Nullar might kiss them again, as his eyes flickered to their lips. But then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a bronze doorknob, half-proffering it.</p><p>"The half-elf, Nyack, was kind enough to return this to me. Said they have other modes of transport to get to their airports, these days.”</p><p>“Tell me, tomorrow, what an airport is,” says Neddas. They cannot help the wistfully memory of old times, of Nullar explaining some new invention while they listen on, not even understanding all that he says but gladdened just from the light that it put in his eyes. A nod to the doorknob. “I recognise magic when I see it.”</p><p>With a glance around them – seeing whether either of them would be missed, Neddas supposed, and it felt strange and wonderful to think that they might not be – Nullar sets the doorknob to the air. It glows, runes shining out from beneath its surface, and then he opens it to a cool breeze and undisturbed night air. Without pause, Neddas steps through.</p><p>It puts them on the shore. Cold sea air immediately ruffles Neddas’s hair and fills their nose with the smell of salt, and as Nullar steps through and closes the door a delighted laugh escapes them. After so long – and yes, even after such time, two hundred years is long and short both at once – it feels good to feel the air again. To their right, a sleek metal pier traces back to the shore, and lights that glow against the sky; to their left stands what at first looks like a grand house, but after a moment looks like <em>most</em> of a grand house as they take in the destruction of one end of it.</p><p>“Liandt awoke still angry,” says Nullar, regret in his voice. To be fair, that did explain it. Especially when it came to each other, over the years they had become too used to indestructibility.</p><p>Though the overwhelming heat of godhood had drained from them, Neddas could still feel the beating of the magic in their chest, the weight of themselves against the magic that was in the very air itself. With a wave of their hand, they put a shield over the debris, and hoped privately that they had not just trapped any seagulls <em>in </em>the damaged areas. However long Nullar had been gone, there would surely have been damage by the sea itself, but at least any further of it could be prevented.</p><p>“There,” they say. “That will keep back the waves.”</p><p>“Your waves,” says Nullar, quietly. Neddas turns to find him standing close again, within an arm’s reach, and the ache in their chest seems stronger now that there is some finite limit on their time. It is as if a veil has been removed from every emotion that rushes through them.</p><p>They smile. “Not any more.”</p><p>Nullar hesitates, and whether it is his old uncertainties or the newer pains of what he has done, Neddas does not know. Later, they can coax words from him. For now they step close to him again, slip an arm around his waist and kiss his mouth, a kiss that surely should not have surprised him but still makes him take a sharp breath. He tastes of those drinks with strange names that the moon-aasimar Onyx had ordered for them all, but he <em>feels</em> the same, the same shape to his lips, the same give beneath the graze of Neddas’s teeth. The same way that he gasps when Neddas wraps a hand around the back of his neck and presses into him, the same way that he cups Neddas’s cheek as desperation breaks through and he kisses in return.</p><p>The same, but new, everything a different sensation on their mortal skin and bringing on a new pounding of their mortal heart. Neddas kisses Nullar over and over, breathlessly, not caring for the chilly air surrounding them and simply pushing their hair aside as it threatens to get in the way. There is truly nothing around them, nothing but the rush of the sea and the whisper of the wind and the sound of the kisses passing between them.</p><p>“I should…” Nullar pulls away, glancing aside, his cheeks aflame. “I should, ah, show you around. Yes. That is what I intended to do.”</p><p>Neddas shakes their head. They had already known where this was more likely to end. “You could do that tomorrow as well,” they say. “Unless you would rather I stop…”</p><p>Trailing away, they start to step back and slip their hand free of Nullar’s neck again, but Nullar catches them with an arm around their waist and <em>there</em> is the certainty again. “No,” says Nullar. He takes a deep breath. “No, I… our time is not unending, now. I will not waste time not admitting that I want you, still. That I… love you, still.”</p><p>He glances down at the doorknob in his hand, then mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “To the hells with it,” as he puts it against the air and turns it sharply again. Neddas catches a glimpse of a bedroom beyond as they lean in to kiss him again, and cannot help laughing, knowing immediately that Nullar thinks it a waste of magic when there are perfectly good stairs but is willing, all the same, to bend his own personal rules this one time.</p><p>Both of them stumble this time as they step into the room, lips still locked, Neddas sliding hands beneath the outer layers of Nullar’s robes. Inside is still dark, but warmer at least, a quiet distant hum somewhere in the depths of the house. Neddas has a faint impression of a large, open room, of windows looking out over the inky sea and to the bright stars, of books on books on books. But that too is a care for another time, when it is their first night as a mortal again and they are in Nullar’s arms.</p><p>They kiss their way down Nullar’s neck, fumbling at his robes, ungainly with the layers as their hands begin to shake with desire. Nullar steers them both across the room, and Neddas lets themselves be guided backwards with the certainty of where they are headed. And indeed, the bump across the back of their knees bought them to the bed, still fighting with the robes.</p><p>This time, when Nullar pulls back, it seems more decisive. He runs his hand down Neddas’s front, then gestures to his own robes. “I never intend to wear these again. We can be rid of them at last.”</p><p>Neddas nods. They are not the same robes, of course; they are replicas and remakings, copies done over and over again over the eons. But always the same colours, the same designs, the same old trappings.</p><p>Pressing his lips tightly together, Nullar reaches up and wrestles with the neck of his robes, then there is a sound of ripping fabric and he tears partway down the front. Neddas catches their breath, and their heart leaps into their throat. They step forwards and grab the fabric as well, ripping it further down and baring skin beneath. The scarless stretch of his chest, just scattered with faint hair, welcome and familiar and <em>home</em>.</p><p>Neddas kisses just beneath Nullar’s shoulder, on his collarbone, sucking and nipping at the skin as both of them push the emerald-green robes away. Then Nullar’s hands were on Neddas’s robes, fabric jostling until he got a good enough hold to rip it away. Neddas helps, twists, gets one arm free and then pushes at the rest until the fabric rips further and falls past their hips to the floor.</p><p>Nullar’s hands are welcome, warm, even if Neddas can feel the dampness of nerves on them as he reaches across Nullar’s skin again. Neddas kisses him, hard, deep, running their hands down his chest and hips, reaching for familiar planes and curves. Their underclothes as well, dispatched with fumbling hands, and they are halfway onto the bed, falling and kneeling and tumbling over each other, when Neddas’s hair catches beneath their elbow and they almost fell.</p><p>“Hang on,” breathes Neddas. Nullar kneels up, breathless, faint marks beginning to appear on his skin visible even in the faint moonlight. Reaching over the side of the bed, Neddas grabs the robes and rips a strip from them, pushes back their hair into a low ponytail and ties it back. They can’t even see which robe it is torn from, does not care. “There.” They smile. “There, that should help.”</p><p>The warmest, softest look that Nullar has worn all day is on his face, and Neddas pauses, reaching up to cup his jaw. They have missed this, this most of all, the time when the inventor and the thinker and the fierce pursuer fade away. When the god fades away. And when Nullar tilts his cheek into Neddas’s hand, it clenches in their gut; they shuffle towards him on the bed, cup his jaw, and press their foreheads together.</p><p>Nullar puts his hand on their thigh, then runs it up to rest on their hip.</p><p>“I missed you,” Nullar whispers. Neddas runs their fingers across his scalp, through his hair. “I wished I could at least have said goodbye.”</p><p>“We will,” replies Neddas. Nullar drags in a ragged breath, and when Neddas kisses his cheeks they can taste salt. “One day, we will. We will grow old, and we will sicken, and we will have our chance to say goodbye.”</p><p>Nullar kisses them, a little too hard and ungainly, and they fall together with legs tangled and bodies seeking out each other’s warmth. Nullar’s mouth is hot against Neddas’s chest, their shoulders, their throat, panting against their skin and twining them ever closer. Every breath, every shift, winds them tighter together, and they cannot miss the rocking shifts of Nullar’s hips. The great mind of a god, frustrated by its own distraction by sexuality, wondering how much more the world could create if it just stopped thinking with its loins for a few centuries. Only for Neddas to remind him with a touch not to forget the world, its people; for Neddas to laugh fondly as in post-climax clarity something would occur to him that would solve some problem on which he had been working. And here, in Neddas’s arms, he gives over to his desires in a way he has never been able to for anyone else.</p><p>Only they see this, Neddas knows. As certainly as only they kiss his lips, as only they writhe beneath him and lace their thighs with his, they know that only they see the tenderness beneath his brass.</p><p>They drag their teeth over Nullar’s lip. “But now?” they breathe, reaching down between them to cup him. He groans against their mouth. “I want you.”</p><p>“I don’t have anything to…” Nullar’s words trail off as Neddas’s fingers caress him. Heat burns under their own skin, only met by his, searing where they touch. They wind the other hand into his hair to hold him closer, rocking their hips together, breath coming together in desperate timed gasps. “To make it easier…”</p><p>A breathless laugh rolls through them. “All of your tinkering, you have no trouble asking for lubricants,” they teased. “Am I so difficult to ask?”</p><p>“Damn you,” Nullar breathes, but Neddas can hear his smile.</p><p>It is almost touching, to think that there have been no others, but Neddas knows with pain that it is because there is only one thing Nullar has been seeking, and that has been the loneliest of aims.</p><p>“There are things we do not need it for,” says Neddas, and moves their hand pointedly. Nullar moans into their shoulder, curls around them, and then with a sharp breath thinks to move his hand between their legs in return. They shiver, murmur wordless sounds against his mouth, and lose themselves to the ancient familiarity of his touch.</p><p>It had always managed to feel, at least for a moment, as if the rest of the world did not matter to them. But now they do not matter to the rest of the world, and it is liberating beyond words, beyond breath. Nothing needs to exist but the two of them, messy irregular kisses and coaxing hands, skin on skin and bodies falling into a familiar tangle.</p><p>So many countless times they have known each other, and so many times it has felt like a first all over again as they begin anew in some way. But Neddas can see now that in their godly bodies they had been <em>dulled</em>, inured to all but the most powerful sensations, and now everything is bright and heavy and overwhelming. They nuzzle against Nullar’s hair, feeling the whisper of his breath against their shoulder, the almost tentatively gentle movements of his hand. Sweat prickles on their skin, despite the cool air. And everywhere, they touch, a dozen points of contact searing into Neddas’s heart and pinning them both back together from the shattered remnants of people they had been in their godhood.</p><p>Nullar bites against their shoulder, and Neddas moans, moving their hand and their hips both more insistently. The bite stings, actually <em>hurts</em>, and it matters in ways Neddas cannot even frame as they whisper Nullar’s name, over and over, voice thickening with the waves of love and awe and pleasure that threaten to turn to tears in their burning eyes. And Nullar replies, both with his body and with mumbled words, and Neddas catches the words <em>I love you</em> amidst them and it is too much.</p><p>Tears prick their eyes, and they tighten their hand in Nullar’s hair and can only manage a choking moan as hit hand coaxes them over the edge. Climax strikes them like a blow, driving the air from their lungs and putting explosions of darkness behind their eyes, and they are half-sure that they whimper into Nullar’s hair as he continues to hold them.</p><p>But then it clears, warmth and calm washing through their body, and Nullar raises himself up on his arms to look down at them. Neddas can see him faintly in the moonlight, the proud line of his jaw, his brow so often furrowed in thought or worry now softened as he looks upon Neddas’s face again. Neddas resumes the steady movement of their own hand, and Nullar gasps and rocks above them, lips parting, shining in the night.</p><p>“I am back,” says Neddas. “And we are free. No destruction of the world to destroy us. No robes to fetter us. <em>We are free</em>.”</p><p>They can feel tears in the corner of their eyes, and then Nullar bows his head and is gasping, shuddering, spending across Neddas’s hand in the muted darkness. He all but collapses onto Neddas, and with their hand slipped free Neddas simply curls around them, listening to both their hearts racing still, their ragged breathing against the ghostly quiet of the great empty house that Nullar had been unable to call his home.</p><p>In the morning, there will be a world to rediscover, two centuries to be told of. There will be humanity to relearn, in all its aches and pains and wonders. There will be explanations to be sought, and made, and almost certainly more tears to be shed. But after everything, to be granted one last lifetime together is more than Neddas had ever thought they could deserve or hope for. And they will walk gratefully into obsolescence, hand in hand with the one they have loved for almost – but never quite – too long, and they will get to know what sort of ending their story has.</p>
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